Just a general question here - lets say you worked on a sell-side M&A deal that failed to close but got through to second round of offers before it flopped. I'm assuming here it would NOT be ok to list the actual name of the company on your resume since theoretically it was never made public that it was happening.
What about IPOs that failed to price and were pulled late in the process? These guys filed an s-1 and were public about their intention to go public, but simply failed to achieve a price they found acceptable. I'm assuming it would therefore be ok to list it by name. But, if they had NOT filed their S-1, then it would NOT be ok to list it by name.
The idea I'm getting at is that most (almost all) of the analyst work has been done in all these scenarios. Obviously you can claim credit for them by listing them generically (sell side M&A roughly XXX million), but somehow it just seems so much more legitimate to have a real name listed... I guess it really all does come down to closing.
I wouldn't list names... just what YOU did. Nobody cares that it was a XXX million dollar deal. They want to know what you specifically contributed to the deal.
You could use the code name (e.g., Project Cliff) or be a bit more specific (e.g., ~$450 million acquisition of "SSD manufacturer" instead of "technology company")
Thanks - that's helpful guys
I disagree completely with the first comment. When possible you should definitely write the name of a Company and the deal size means a lot to PE firms / hedge funds recruiting (not necessarily that it should, but it does). Also a little more nuanced, but using project names on a resume can go badly (see below, had a direct experience with this recently).
First your confidentiality assumptions are generally correct, however I'm not sure how much value you get from putting a failed IPO project on your resume (PE firms have limited interest in any IPO deals, including ones that close, so a failed one is not likely to impress anyone. Hedge funds would care some more about the IPOs).
On the name of the Company, you should 100% for sure put the name of companies in any closed deals on your resume. Through recruiting season, most first year analysts don't have good experience to put on their resume and they try to make first round diligence / detailed strategic discussions sound like real deals (when in reality the experience pales in comparison). By putting the name of a closed deal on your resume, you immediately eliminate that doubt and legitimize your deal. As JoJo said your role will be important (secondary to your understanding of the deal and strategic / deal dynamics, but still important), and all of that will carry more weight when they know it was a real deal.
On size, this is slightly more difficult to explain, but for whatever reasons people in finance believe bigger deals are better. I even fall for this myself when I review resumes, but I put a lot more weight in a $10Bn deal with two companies I know about than a $200MM deal. It's very similar to how analysts from bulge bracket analysts have much better opportunities than top flight MM firms, people just think bigger deals signify better work experience. Again, not necessarily a bias based in any logic or reasoning, but I can assure you it is a real industry bias. Also, as mentioned above, the size of a deal legitimizes that it's more real, so if your deal has not closed yet put something like "$1.5Bn Sell Side Advisory for Healthcare Third Party Administrator".
To address the project name, this seems like a good idea but can end up breaching confidentiality inadvertently. I had this happen to me during this last round of interviewing. I was interviewing a candidate for my PE shop and I saw a project name that I recognized on his resume. Before I left my bank, we had advised a buyside client on this project so I recognized the name and knew of the situation from group meetings. However, one of the most confidential parts of a process is who the parties are still in the process. Through this interview I was able to hear all about one of the other buyers, their thought / valuation process and how far they made it in the process. The process had since been suspended and the party my bank represented had dropped out before that, but you get the idea that had the process still been live this candidate would have inadvertently told me a lot of very confidential information by putting the project name on his resume.
CV confidentiality (Originally Posted: 05/16/2012)
Are CVs sent to headhunters always held confidentially..? Any bad experiences out there?
Generally, they are pretty good from my experience. I have never had a problem. Discretion is kind of their thing. However, it wouldn't surprise me if there were a few exceptions to the rule out there.
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